Re: CHAT: The Conlang Instinct

>From: Gerald Koenig <jlk@...>
>Reply-To: Constructed Languages List <CONLANG@...>
>To: Multiple recipients of list CONLANG <CONLANG@...>
>Subject: The Conlang Instinct
>Date: Wed, 1 Dec 1999 18:02:46 -0800
[snip stuff on the always-fascinating subject of synesthesia]

>Now, does anyone see the need for a personal gender system here? I
>wonder how Pat Duffy would like seeing a year as a single long vector,
>or 12 month-vectors head to tail, as in my vector tense grammar? Can
>natlang grammar do violence to the mind of a conlanger? Do language
>universals work for conlangers, or are they a secondary layer as
>suggested in a way by Ed Heil to me. Are conlangers langesthetes?  Are
>our internal perceptions of language non-standard yet fully functional?
>I've always been able to get my A's in English in spite of a tremendous
>inner dissatisfaction with much of it. Maybe conlangers have an
>extra or idiosyncratic mapping of language in the brain. That is the
>direction of research in synesthesis. Synesthetes are finding one
>another on the web. Perhaps we need a test to exclude anyone who tastes
>languages that start with a-u-x. I might not be here either.
>
>
>Abnormally yours,
>
>----------------------------------------------------------------------
>Jerry |                                 Without careful communication
>Gerald Lea Koenig | jlkatnetcomdotcom   There is boundless demonization.
>----------------------------------------------------------------------
That is so interesting!  I have thought for a while that my perception of
English may be "non-standard but fully functional."  Perhaps we should ask a
new "lefthand/righthand/goatee/hair color/sexual orientation" question: What
is your personal writing style like in your native language?  Does it ever
get you into trouble, i.e., do pedantic proofreaders ever give you grief
about perfectly grammatical sentences that run to five clauses or more?
Obviously, as a group we must be very "verbal" people, independent of
"right-brain/left-brain dominance".  So I guess we should ask: Do you
consistently and spontaneously do quirky things with your native lang? Did
you do this before you were consciously a conlanger?

On a related but far-fetched subject: At a very early stage of deveplopment
of Asiteya, I had created a verb "yasan" - to dwell. Months later, having
forgotten about its existence, I needed a word for house. Rolling sounds
around on my tongue for a while, I found "yasi" tasted just right.
Unrelated events of creation, related words. It makes me think, perhaps
these languages are already fully formed, deep in the subconscious, waiting
for the intellect to discover them.  Has anyone else had expereinces like
this?

Jennifer
making a renewed effort to consciously develop her idiolect away from
standard English

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